Apple upgraded Aperture Tuesday morning, its pro photo editing and management software for the Mac, with over 200 new features, including Faces, Places and Brushes. More importantly, Apple re-wrote Aperture 3 as a 64-bit application that takes advantage of multi-core CPUs and GPU-accelerated graphics, courtesy of Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

Apple’s marketing chief Philip Schiller pitched the software to both pros and consumers:

Millions of people love using iPhoto to organize, edit and share their digital photos. Aperture 3 is designed for both professionals who edit and manage massive libraries of photos and iPhoto users who want to take their photos further with easy-to-use tools such as Brushes and Adjustment Presets.

Aperture 3 borrowed a few popular features from iPhoto, Apple’s consumer photo management software that’s preloaded on every new Mac as part of the iLife digital lifestyle suite. More precisely, Aperture now has the iPhoto’s Faces and Places feature that tap facial recognition and geotagging to organize your images according to people faces and where they’d been taken, respectively.

A new view displays faces that have been detected but haven’t yet been named, Apple said. Just like in iPhoto, you can now assign locations to photos in Aperture 3 by dropping photos onto a world map or by using the embedded geolocation saved when you take photos using GPS-enabled cameras and devices like the iPhone.

APERTURE MEETS IPHOTO Aperture 3 took clues from iPhoto with Places (left) and Faces (right) features that organize photos according to people’s faces and geolocation, respectively. Brushes (middle) with automatic edge detection provides popular image adjustments.

The new Brushes feature with automatic edge detection lets you paint image adjustments on to parts of your photo using handy presets for popular tasks such as Dodge, Burn, Polarize, and Blur. Those effects are painted on to images without the complexity of layers or masks, Apple stressed. Also new are Adjustment Presets that facilitate pro-grade one-click image effects. The software ships with dozens of effect presets and you can create your own or import presets shared via the web.

Apple also added new slideshows that combine photos, audio, text, and HD video, and you can export slideshows to iTunes. The new full-screen browser will also come in handy when you need to browse your entire image library. Just like iPhoto, Aperture 3 sports export options for posting your photos directly to Facebook and Flickr, in addition to the in-app ordering of prints and custom hardcover books.

Apple’s software competes alongside Adobe’s capable image tools for the Mac that also cater to both entry-level markets (Lightroom) and pro users (Photoshop). Aperture 3 retails for $199/£169, but existing Aperture users can upgrade for $99/£79. A free 30-day trial is available for download here. The software requires an Intel-based Mac with Intel Core 2 Duo processor or faster and Mac OS X Snow Leopard.